It’s funny all kinds of privacy information all over the web and again I’m insistent that we need to license all data sellers as we don’t know who they all are to regulate and we have no index so government and everyone else is just spinning their wheels with getting any type of law in place to protect or help consumers and if you look the folks involved with all these meetings, very few if any have any data mechanics logic and think software companies will write APIs to help us out. Instead we get legal complex privacy statements to read and actually this mechanism is having a reverse effect as I and I think many others just shine it on and move on as it’s too stressful to try to figure what they are saying, again I just move on if it’s too much as I have so many other things going on in my life and apps are mostly options.

If you didn’t read the World Privacy Forum report, it’s a good one and fair and explores both sides of meaningful scoring and “junk science” scores a bit too. The rest of the world is kind of watching this insanity occurring in the US and as I said in the title any time you query and score and develop some additional type of data on a consumer, guess what we have data burning a hole in our pockets to sell. All of the data sellers, and this goes beyond data brokers want to keep this real low key too as they do it but they really want to stay under the radar about it and just collect their cash. It’s easy money once the queries are written that start hauling in data. Banks are making out like crazy as well as health insurers and many other types of companies, Walgreens pulls in an easy billion a year and it may be higher than that and you know CVS is right up there with them.

All of this is not ethical and you will never get that from algorithms, that’s purely human so when you see stories about someone getting their pension cut to $5 a month, that’s a Killer Algorithm at work. Two years ago I said this was a growing issue, but nobody paid much attention and here we are now. You have credit agencies mining the web for anything they can find on you, and worse yet we have our somewhat goofy Consumer Protection agency that wants to build a data base on all US consumer credit data. He has no clue on hard that will be to keep up and the cost of warehousing it is almost non sustainable but that’s the kind of thinking non data mechanics logic folks come up with.

Then of course we have health insurers both buying and selling data as they do their share of making queries and selling data to someone else too. It seems like people just can’t make this connection who are on the outside looking in but the ones on the inside are making billions selling data so they are more than happy to create some additional proprietary scoring, just like FICO did with their farce of a medication adherence scoring, total bunk but they can make money selling it and again consumers get hurt as it’s flawed data, proprietary that nobody can model and recreate so we just end up trusting old FCIO money bag quants and coders who created this. The quants are getting paid well for doing their job and bringing money in. The World Privacy Forum takes then to task lightly too as FICO says all they need is a name and address to “score” you for medication adherence.

So there you have it as to why this compulsive “Scoring of America” is taking place as it creates more data to sell. It’s funny that most privacy reports and folks just don’t want to touch the fact that “selling” occurs but I go the whole picture, follow the data and the money today, you need to do both. The White House Privacy and Big Data report, not a mention of data selling, totally bliss non data mechanic folks like we have seen at HHS with Kathleen Sebelius and now Mary Jo White at the SEC…”no it’s not rigged” when in fact with the excessive scoring that is taking place in the US, yes it is rigged and it’s not limited to markets. The President addressed it but that’s where it started and ended but even the White House today is using some junk science themselves and seems to be behaving more like a bot with their communications and information they send out, just like the rest of the stuff in my mailbox as it doesn’t even stand out much anymore except for the letterhead at the top.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.